Healthy Eating Tips: Tipping the Scales in Your Favor

Have you decided to start eating healthier and become
more physically active? Have you realized that healthy choices have a positive
impact on not only yourself, but also those around you?

If your goal is to lose weight or maintain your current
healthy weight, here are some tips to help you achieve that goal. Remember, to
maintain weight, you must balance calories with the energy you burn through physical activity. If you
eat more than you expend, you gain weight. If you eat less (reduce calories)
than you expend, you lose weight!

Make healthy choices a habit. This leads to a healthy lifestyle! Make a commitment to eat well,
move more, and get support from family and friends. Even
better, start eating healthier and being active together!

Remember to be realistic about your goals. If you try to reduce the calories,
fat, saturated fat, and sugar in your diet AND promise to make a drastic change
in your physical activity level, you may be setting yourself up for failure.
Instead of trying to make many changes at once, set smaller, more realistic
goals for yourself and add a new challenge each week.

Conduct an inventory of your meal/snack and physical activity patterns. Keep a food and activity journal. Write down not only what you ate, but where, when,
and what you were feeling at the time. You will see what triggers your hunger
and what satisfies your appetite. What foods do you routinely shop for? What
snacks do you keep in the pantry?